I suppose this is the place where I should set up some sort of excuse for whatever this blog is. Unfortunately, I am the kind of person that uses writing as a tool for understanding, which is to say I often don't know what exactly I think about something until I write about it. While in school, I eventually learned to save writing the introductions of my papers for last. And why should this be any different?
I guess the thing on my mind most heavily of late is the question "Who gets to say what a text means?" (And if you don't know the etymology of "text" by this point in your life, perhaps it's time you finally shook hands with it here.) This deceptively simple question has many twists and turns, but it seems ever-relevant, constantly pushing its way to the front of the line in numerous settings: politics (in the form of left or right political spin), religion (who gets to define what being a Muslim is? or what the valid interpretation(s) of the Bible are?), literary enjoyment/aesthetic appreciation (who gets to say what a "good" book is?). When you stretch the definition so much that you begin to see people themselves as kinds of "texts," the list wags on.
So that's where I start from.
I also appreciate a lot of what Stanley Fish has written on the subject of interpretive communities (the last 4 chapters of Is There a Text in This Class? in particular). I should probably mention that, too, before I say much else.
